


Mine First

by whitherwaywill



Series: within the confines of canon [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, POV Petunia Evans Dursley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23499661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitherwaywill/pseuds/whitherwaywill
Summary: Petunia hated Harry. But once upon a time, before his mother's Hogwarts letter arrived, before Severus Snape met Lily...Petunia was her sister's best friend. And even as the sisters grew apart, divided by the cultural differences, every time Petunia saw Lily with some of her magical friends, she told herself: "She was mine first."
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley & Lily Evans Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley/Vernon Dursley
Series: within the confines of canon [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739902
Kudos: 15





	Mine First

Mr. and Mrs. Evans were perfectly normal, and they would be pleased to tell you just how normal they were. Mrs. Evans married Mr. Evans at a perfectly respectable age, and their first child, a girl they named Petunia, was born at a perfectly respectable time thereafter.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans doted on their baby girl. And when Mrs. Evans became pregnant again, so soon after Petunia was born, they rejoiced, for if one perfectly normal baby girl was perfect, a second perfectly normal baby would be wonderful!

Petunia was only one when her younger sibling, a girl, was born. Her parents named her new baby sister Lily.

“Our little flower garden,” Mr. Evans said fondly as he held Petunia up to see her sister in her mother’s arms.

Petunia wasn’t talking just yet, but she understood perfectly what her parents told her next.

“Now, Petunia, this is your baby sister, Lily. Your sister.” Petunia looked questioningly at the squishy thing her mother was holding. With a chubby little finger, she pointed at Lily, then at herself.

“Yes, Petunia. Yours.”

That moment shaped her life. Lily was _hers._ Hers to play with, hers to tease. Hers to be angry with, hers to love.

And love her she did, even when it became obvious that Lily wasn’t as perfectly normal as she seemed. Lily made things fly. Lily made…things…happen. Lily was perfect, and to Petunia, her little sister carried the sun and the moon and the stars in her grass green eyes.

Even as Mr. and Mrs. Evans held hushed conversations in their bedroom, conversations they didn’t want their children to hear, Petunia loved her Lily.

And it was because she loved her Lily that she warned her away from the boy.

That boy, with the greasy hair and the hooked nose, the boy who wore a great billowing jacket and his mother’s smock underneath.

That boy dismissed Petunia as easily as if she were a fly, a slight annoyance, a small hindrance. All his attention for Lily. And suddenly, it seemed as if all of Lily’s attention went to that boy. Sev, she called him. He was a boy who could do…things…just like Lily. A boy who told her wondrous stories of a world that existed right alongside theirs. A world where the…things…Lily could do were as perfectly normal as Petunia and her parents were.

A world that left Petunia behind.

Lily was enthralled by the boy, even as he caused…things…to happen. Things like branches, falling on top of Petunia after she had followed Lily to one of the little meetings she had with that boy. Severus Snape.

And Lily left her behind. She left Petunia behind for a world of magic.

At the station, their two muggle parents gaped in awe. Petunia pouted, trying not to succumb to the tears threatening to fall.

Lily said goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Evans. She got her trunk. That boy waved to her, closer to the train, calling to her. Lily waved back. But then she stopped, and turned back.

Petunia’s heart almost stopped as her baby sister walked towards her, carrying the sun and the moon and the stars in her green eyes.

She was frozen as Lily questioned her about the letter she had written, the CONFIDENTIAL letter, to Albus Dumbledore.

Petunia had begged to be able to follow her Lily, her baby sister. She had bargained, all for naught.

Shame prickled her eyes as she lashed out at her Lily, as she watched those green eyes grow dark, as she watched her little sister turn around and walk away from her.

“Mine,” Petunia sobbed quietly, the image of her sister moving toward the train and that boy blurry through unshed tears. “She was mine first.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

She may have been Petunia’s first, but no longer. As the years passed by, Lily grew, surpassing Petunia in beauty, and, so it seemed, intelligence.

Petunia brought home the best marks she could get, showing them to her parents and hoping for praise. She was always disappointed, forced to watch with hurt in her eyes as her parents waved her away and begged Lily to show them the O’s she got from the magic school. The novelty was too much for Mr. and Mrs. Evans.

And Petunia watched as Lily deflected questions about her school. She narrowed her eyes as Lily dodged yet another, then another, question about her friends and how she was treated at ‘Hogwarts’.

Was Petunia the only one who could see how upset Lily was by some of these questions?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Petunia graduated with honors. The next year, Lily graduated with more. By then, Mr. and Mrs. Evans were dead.

Asphyxiation, the police told Petunia. A gas leak in your house.

Guilt threatened to overwhelm her. Petunia had been spending too much time away from. It was just her luck that this sort of thing would happen on one of the days she stayed over at Vernon’s.

Vernon was Petunia’s boyfriend. He was a large man, and she felt quite small next to him, even being as tall as she was.

He was the first one to notice her for who she was. He had come up to her as she had been sitting alone at her favorite coffee shop, staring out the window at the rain.

He had noticed her. And they were together. And when Petunia had finally worked up the courage to stay the night at his flat, her parents were murdered in their beds.

“Voldemort…” Lily whispered to her, tears filling the eyes that still, after so many years, carried the sun and the moon and the stars in them. “My fault…” was also said, and “vigilantes” and “muggle-killers”, and “My fault” again.

The messy haired man who had come with her to visit the house and collect her things before Petunia sold it rubbed her back, comforting her.

Petunia could barely hold her screams in as the two couples sat on two couches across from each other, Vernon mirroring Lily’s strange boyfriend’s pose.

“On a happier note…”

That was when Lily announced her engagement.

Petunia sat numbly as Vernon carried on the conversation stiffly, his face red as he _attempted_ to be polite to Petunia’s witch sister.

Vernon knew all about magic. And he was less than pleased to know such a thing existed in this world.

Petunia twisted her own engagement ring around her finger, the ring that Vernon had given to her two months ago. The ring that would announce the fact that she was promised to someone for eighteen more days, eighteen days until she became Mrs. Petunia Dursley.

Now that her parents were gone, she didn’t have to invite Lily.

And she wasn’t going to.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Petunia married Vernon Dursley in a quiet ceremony, with a quiet reception, and a perfect honeymoon.

A year later, they received an invitation to Lily’s wedding.

“You don’t have to go,” Vernon told her, watching her with worried eyes. He was more than a little apprehensive about going to such an openly magical event.

“I’ll go,” Petunia said quietly. “I’ll go.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lily was resplendent in her beautiful wedding gown, face glowing with joy as she walked up the aisle toward the wizard she was marrying, surrounded by people who thought Lily was theirs.

They were right. She had been Petunia’s but now… now Petunia had lost her baby sister. A baby sister she hadn’t had for a while now.

“Mine,” Petunia mouthed as she sat in the front next to her husband of a year. A pinched expression was on their faces, for two different reasons. “She was mine first.”

Petunia sat and watched as a strange man gave away _her_ baby sister to another strange man, a man she didn’t know but who looked at Lily as if she carried the sun and the moon and the stars in her green eyes. He doesn’t deserve her, Petunia thought. No one deserves her. Not even me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lily’s wedding was the last contact Petunia had with her for a long time. She still sent the mandatory Christmas present.

No letters. No calls. No talking.

Until the day Petunia opened the door to get a milk, and found Lily’s one-year-old son sleeping on her doorstep.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vernon practically exploded with anger. He and Petunia screamed and shouted, the latter hardly knowing why she was fighting for Lily’s son.

At long last, the argument settled down, and Petunia left her husband to stew as she moved to stare at the sleeping toddler.

Petunia gazed at the boy, the boy with Lily’s grass green eyes, and Lily’s husband’s hair, and Lily’s husband’s glasses, and Lily’s husband’s nose, the boy with Lily’s strange, magical husband written all over her.

Petunia looked up at her own husband, watching as the blood rushed to his face, as he became redder and redder in the way he was prone to do.

Finally, he defused. “Fine,” he growled. “Just fine. Put him in the spare crib in Dudley’s room.”

Petunia moved to lift the baby boy into her arms, then paused. Startled by the sudden movement, the baby boy opened his eyes.

His green eyes.

Green eyes he had undoubtedly gotten from Lily.

 _“Yes, Petunia, yours.”_ Words from a not-quite memory ghosted through her head, and Petunia withdrew.

“Petunia?” Vernon asked, sounding distant, farther away than where he was at her shoulder.

In a flash, Petunia could see what would happen.

 _“Yes, Dudley, yours.”_ She heard herself say, introducing her son to this boy with Lily’s green eyes. And Dudley would grow up seeing the sun and the moon and the stars in Lily’s son’s green eyes. And her son would break his heart when Lily’s son went off to that horrid, magic school, and immersed himself in that horrid, magic world, the same way Lily did.

He would be heartbroken when he was left behind. When this little boy, _Harry,_ made new, magic friends who didn’t understand that Harry was _his._ His to love, his to protect.

His to lose. Just like Petunia had lost Lily.

Petunia came to on the couch that sat in her small family’s living room.

“Petunia!” Vernon whispered gently, his face hovering above her, his moustache drooping down into her face. “Petunia, are you all right? What did the little devil do to you?”

_Little devil._

“I – I don’t know,” Petunia said woozily. “I bent over to get him, and I just suddenly – felt – faint…”

A scowl marred Vernon’s perfectly normal, perfectly respectable face. “Not in Dudley’s room,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll make up the cupboard under the stairs. That’s where he’ll go.”

Without another word, Vernon Dursley stood up and grabbed the baby, carting the boy off into the other room, to wait while Vernon fixed up the cupboard for him.

_The cupboard under the stairs._

Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley would not be friends. Oh no, they wouldn’t. Dudley was her perfectly normal little boy, who fit perfectly into Petunia’s perfectly normal life, with her perfectly normal husband, in her perfectly normal house.

With the special, magical boy in the cupboard under the stairs, the boy who had Lily’s eyes.

No, Lily had never been perfectly normal. She had never been meant to fit into this perfectly normal life that Petunia led. Lily had always been destined for something more. Something magical, something special, something exciting.

A spectacular love.

A small child.

A world that got Lily, _her_ Lily, her perfect, special, magical Lily killed.

Petunia closed her eyes.

_“Yes, Petunia. Yours.”_

She didn’t care what they said about her. Didn’t care what they thought about her. Didn’t care if they knew or not…

But Lily was _hers_ first.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


End file.
